Campaigning against the government's distressing war on disabled benefit claimants. All posts represent the opinions of their respective authors and not WtB as a whole.

Wednesday, 31 August 2011

Lib Dem Minister Washes Hands Over ESA Criticism

Steve Webb, the junior Liberal Democrat minister left in charge at the DWP while his Tory bosses are on holiday, has responded to the savage criticism (in oh-so-polite parliamentary language) of his department's handling of ESA figures by both the Select Committee on Work and Pensions and the UK Statistical Authority (which considered the situation bad enough it had to invoke its statutory powers to intervene), by writing to Dame Anne Begg, chair of the Select Committee.

Yet according to Dame Anne, his response addresses neither the criticism of the language used around the statistics, nor the use of the statistics, nor the Select Committee's call for DWP to discuss the use of the statistics with newspaper editors and did nothing to reassure her over the DWP's off-the-record briefings to newspapers - which leaves you wondering what he did address. Dame Anne described the letter as 'not satisfactory,' 'very short' and 'overly dismissive', while describing ministers as 'shrugging their shoulders'.

It seems the DWP treat the Select Committee with the same contempt they treat us!

See the article here by WWW.DisabilityNewService.Com for the full story.